The analysis of the behavior of motile, living cells using computer-assisted systems comprises a crucial tool in understanding, for example, the reasons why cancer cells become metastic, the reasons why HIV infected cells do not perform their normal functions, and the roles of specific cytoskeletal and signaling molecules in cellular locomotion during embryonic development and during cellular responses in the immune system. Further, motion analysis systems have been used to analyze the parameters of the shape and motion of objects in a variety of diverse fields. For example, such systems have been used for analysis of such diverse dynamic phenomena as the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, echocardiography, human kinesiology, insect larvae crawling, sperm motility, bacterial swimming, cell movement and morphological change, shape changes of the embryonic heart, breast movement for reconstructive surgery, and the like. Often times, the information required to analyze such systems requires manual gathering of data. For example, in analyzing embryonic heart action, a researcher would display an echocardiograph of a heart on a monitor and make measurements of the monitor using a scale, or the like, held up to the screen. The tedious and time consuming nature of these types of manual measurements severely limits the practicality of such an approach.
Moreover, the patterns of a higher eukaryotic organism are laid down during embryogenesis. In this process, cell multiplication, cell differentiation, the definition of the body axes, cell and tissue reorganization and the genesis of organ systems progress in an integrated fashion both in time and space. With the advent of molecular and genetic tools, and sequencing of entire genomes, the regulatory mechanisms underlying the different aspects of embryogenesis are rapidly being elucidated.